…Continuing from our last issue to reflection on life and death - here I am quoting several more verses from the Qur’an, without any commentary, for us to reflect and reassess how we view this life and the life to come.
“God created life and death so that you can be tried to see who is best in conduct.” (Q67:2).
“It is God who brings you to death and assigns you a grave” (Q80:21).
“(Consider) when the soul reaches the throat (to exit at death), it wishes if any charm-healer can help! It knows the final parting as legs can no longer separate. Now he is driven to the Sustainer God. He neither had faith nor devotion; he denied reality, turned away and went back to his friends with arrogance. Yet closer and close death comes to you, closer still – does human beings think they will be left alone? Was he not simple cells that combined and split and clung for life that God shaped in due proportion (in the womb), forming distinct sexes – male and female. CAN God who makes this life NOT ABLE to bring life back from the dead?” (Q75:26-40)
“God created you from earth, into living cells that combined and split, to transform from childhood to maturity, and to old age while some of you die young so that each of you can reach its appointed term, learn to use reason and understand (the reality)! It is God Who decrees life and death. When God decrees an affair, God says to it, “Be” and “It becomes!” (Q40:67-68)
“God takes the soul at the time of your death and during your sleep for those who die not (yet). God then withholds those on whom God had decreed death while sending back the souls for others until a time already appointed. In this affair, there are signs for those who wish to reflect.” (Q39:42)
